The Last Resistance

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In The Last Resistance , Jacqueline Rose explores the power of writing to create and transform our political lives. In particular, she examines the role of literature in the Zionist imagination: here, literature is presented as a unique form of dissidence, with the power to expose the unconscious of nations, and often proposing radical alternatives to their dominant pathways and beliefs.

While Israel-Palestine is the repeated focus, The Last Resistance also turns to post-apartheid South Africa, to American national fantasy post-9/11, and to key moments for the understanding of Jewish culture and memory. Rose also underscores the importance of psychoanalysis, both historically in relation to the unfolding of world events, and as a tool of political understanding.

Examining topics ranging from David Grossman, through W.G. Sebald, Freud, Nadine Gordimer, the concept of evil, and suicide bombers, The Last Resistance offers a unique way of responding to the crises of the times.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This volume comprises primarily work already published: introductions by Rose, a preface, a public conversation, and essays that appeared in journals featuring feminist, postmodern, revisionist, and multicultural approaches (London Review of Books, New Formations, Critical Inquiry). In dissecting Israel's treatment of Palestinians and suicide murderers ("the last resistors"), Rose (English and drama, Queen Mary Univ., UK), wields scalpels from sources as disparate as Walt Whitman, Stefan Zweig, Sigmund Freud, Edward Said, Jacques Derrida, Gillian Rose, Noam Chomsky, and other writers on politics, social responsibility, psychoanalysis, and literary theory. She believes the Israeli "wall" is an immoral impediment to Palestinian self-rule, not a basic defense against bombers who killed hundreds and wounded thousands. In fact, she says, Israel is a hate-shaped state, forced on Palestinian Arabs by Europe's Holocaust, and a paradigm of negative "univocality." Alan Dershowitz, Daniel Pipes, and most Jewish readers will reject Rose's neo-Marxist approach and historical revisionings; her perspective will please radical Palestinians, Iran's president, and all who urge Israel's dissolution. Rose writes lyrically about the plight of Palestinians. Her mind is first-rate, her reading wide--and her book unabashedly controversial. The text's univocality and the plethora of arcane references may limit its audience. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; general readers. R. H. Solomon formerly, University of Alberta